


and you're trying to smile

by bittereternity



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Post-Body and Soul, Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 14:44:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Summary: </b><i>Death and a doctor walk into a bar.</i> Wilson is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, but this is just the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and you're trying to smile

A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river  
But then he’s still left  
With the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away  
But then he’s still left with his hands.

Richard Siken, Boot Theory

*

Death and a doctor walk into a bar. This is, however, not the beginning of a joke.

Death looks up and upon seeing the doctor, stands up and pulls out the chair opposite him.

“You came,” he says.

The doctor sighs.”I did,” he says.

Death smiles. “I’m glad.”

The doctor sits carefully, tucking his feet beneath the legs of the chair. He places his hands on the table in front of him.

Death looks at him and smiles, the kind and affectionate smile only a grandparent can bestow upon a kid. The doctor looks away. He knows – knew, in fact, from the moment he stepped inside- that this isn’t an encounter he will walk away from.

Death says, “Hi, James.”

*

It takes four hours for him to be able to say the words out loud. Four hours of looking at the same diagnosis, staring at the same scan and the same report. Four hours of feeling like he’s drowning even though, logically, he knows that isn’t possible because he’s on solid ground and there is no water anywhere near him. Four hours of feeling like he may never be able to breathe again.

Four hours and he’s standing in front of the window in his office and trying to count the size of the raindrops splattering against the screen. It’s an impossible task, much like everything else has been lately.

Four hours and he sighs, look straight ahead and rips off the band-aid. “I have cancer, House,” he says.

There is no reply. Wilson wasn't expecting one, anyway.

*

“Why are you here, James?” asks Death.

The doctor laughs without a shred of joy in his voice. “Did I have a choice?”

Death laughs too. “You always have a choice,” he says, even as he’s sitting right there with an unsettling aura of serenity.

The doctor sighs. “I have cancer,” he says, and the words roll off his tongue much easily now that it’s the second, third, fourth time. He lays his trump card on the table early; there is no point in banal politeness when you have a limited number of breaths.

Death nods. His eyes crinkle and he looks like he’s far away, like this is an abyss of incredible sadness he wants to escape. “How does that make you feel?” he wants to know.

The doctor purses his lips, refuses to express the mix of amusement and frustration he’s feeling. “You’re not my goddamn therapist,” he snaps.

“No,” Death agrees. Waits.

The doctor sighs. “I don’t think I’ve had enough time to process it,” he says. This isn’t the real truth, and he knows it’s futile to lie to Death even as he does it.

Death leans forward and narrows his eyes. There is a spark there, somewhere. Others have confused it for a streak of sheer sadism, but mostly, it’s just the joy of being able to deduce.

“ _Wilson, James, boy wonder oncologist_ ,” Death’s voice is low, taunting, bordering on harsh. “That’s not the whole truth, is it?”

The doctor – Wilson, James; there was never a point in hiding it anyway – stays silent.

“Tell me the truth,” Death asks again, more insistently. “Would it sadden you to die?”

Wilson remains silent. Looks away and thinks back to years of friendship behind glass doors and having the ability to walk away when a conversation gets too real.

“Of course I don’t want to die,” is what he finally replies.

Death leans back and smiles. “You don’t,” he concedes. “But a part of is relieved, isn’t it? A part of you is happy to have the option.”

Wilson looks genuinely confused. “You think I’m suicidal?”

Death shakes his head. “Not the dying part. But a part of you is looking forward to the aftermath. A part of you is hoping for the aftermath you’ve always wanted.”

“What do you think I want?” Wilson loses control of the conversation. It’s laughable, really, for him to think that he could’ve ever controlled any of this.

Death is soft, gentle, understanding. “You want to see _them_ again. The people you lost.”

*

He visits Foreman three days later and sets the file down on his table without comment. Foreman doesn't react at all except for a slight raise of an eyebrow.

“It could be worse,” he says, setting the file back down.

Wilson resists the urge to retort with a scoff and a _no, it couldn’t_. He had never been very good at barely-concealed disdain, anyway. He looks away.

“Have you--” Foreman hesitates.

“Told anyone, you mean? It’s not exactly the kind of thing I want to broadcast.”

Foreman raises an eyebrow again.

“Besides,” Wilson continues, “it would not inspire confidence in my terminal patients. No one wants to be treated by a sick doctor, especially a doctor who might have a similar illness.”

Foreman sighs. “Stage Two is still early,” he says. “I can get you into surgery by this afternoon, if you would like. Best case scenario, you wouldn’t need radiation at all. If the tumor is found to be more malignant than the reports here show, we can always take a more aggressive approach--”

Wilson swallows. The urge to snap grows in his throat and tastes like a bile. “You’re not an oncologist,” he finally interrupts.

Foreman looks lost at the transition. “Yeah, but you are. So you must have already come to the same conclusion. You must-”

He is cut off again. “Foreman,” Wilson says gently.

Foreman makes a vague gesture with his hands before folding them together on his lap. “You did _good_ , Wilson,” he finally says. “You caught it early.”

Wilson runs a hand through his face and is almost surprised when it comes back dry.

“Have you, ah, told him yet?” Foreman asks again, wonders when he got the time to cultivate the inflection in his tone to be almost-compassion.

Wilson shrugs. “He didn’t have anything to say.”

*

“You know it isn’t logical, right?” Death prods gently. “If you believe in the existence of both Life and Death, you have to believe that they are opposing sides of the same phenomenon. The way you live and the way you die together form the Möbius strip that is your existence. But, at no point is there an intersection of the two. So, if your memories, your attachments are with the living, it will have no place in this continuum when you cease to live.”

Wilson looks down at the table. “A friend of mine,” he suddenly says, “he stuck a knife into a socket once just to find out what it was like to die.”

Death leans in, interested. “And did he?”

“Did he what?”

“Die?”

Wilson taps a finger on the table that provides the only buffer between them. “He did.”

Death settles in his chair again. “And yet you’re sitting here, reliving it with a smile as if it were a fond memory you never want to part with.”

Wilson purses his lips until they’re set in a straight line.

“You don’t cease to exist as long as there is some form of recollection, some memory of you out there somewhere, you see,” Death explains patiently, using his hands and his face to express a gesture of vastness. “Dying doesn’t mean that you aren’t existing anymore, it just means that the topological variant that defined you in space has simply ceased to be.”

Wilson scoffs. “Death is merely the cessation of the physiological reactions and functions of the body,” he counters. “I’m a doctor, I think I know that.”

Death shakes his head. “You don’t believe that,” he says.

Wilson runs a hand through his hair, tries not to grab and pull to avoid this interminable back and forth. “Why do you think I don’t?”

“Because you would never be here if you did.” Death’s voice is smooth.

*

He wakes up the next Sunday to find Chase on his doorstep.

“I have pancakes and alcohol,” he announces as Wilson lets him in.

Wilson squints at the sudden brightness as Chase pulls back the windows and lets the sunlight in. “Please, make yourself at home,” he mutters grumpily but the latter remains undaunted.

“I thought you would be a lot cleaner and a lot less snarky,” Chase observes.

Wilson grits his teeth. “What are you doing here?”

Chase sighs and looks down at his feet. “Foreman told me,” he says simply.

The sudden anger that bubbles within him is simultaneously irrational and refreshing. “He had no right,” Wilson practically growls.

Chase raises both his hands in a gesture of surrender. “He was only worried, Wilson,” he says. “He said it’s been two weeks since you told him and you still haven’t started any treatment or taken any days off. He’s worried you’re not dealing with this.”

“I am dealing with this. What else do you think I could _possibly_ have on my mind?”

“Are you dealing?” Chase asks softly.

Wilson sighs as the rare moment of fight goes out him, leaving him to deflate like a balloon without any helium.

“I—don’t-” He sighs again and in a split-second reaction, makes a fist and punches his coffee table. There is no dent but his hand throbs and somehow that makes it easier to talk.

“How could he be so _stupid_?” he spits out in the midst of the frayed edges of his pain. “For years, _years_ I told him to look at other options, told him to quit and he would make half-assed jokes and give me lame excuses and tried to turn the whole thing on me. He even fucking pretended to be sick so many times and never, _never_ did it occur to him that he could actually be sick.”

“Wilson, you knew acute liver failure is one of the symptoms of prolonged Vicodin usage,” Chase whispers in a low voice, stuck between a need to soothe and grieve.

“Of course I know that,” Wilson snaps again, and his voice rises steadily as it ricochets off his walls. “He threw it in everyone’s faces like we’re all a bunch of monkeys flinging poop in a damn zoo. And he’s supposed to be a _genius_? What the _hell_ kind of genius cannot diagnose himself?”

“Wilson--”

“How could he be so _stupid_?” Wilson’s voice breaks on the last word. He sits heavily down on his couch and Chase hesitates for a minute for sitting down next to him. Wilson rubs his face and wipes the sheen of sweat off his brow.

“Wilson, none of us thought--” Chase starts, but Wilson isn’t listening. He is staring a spot on the wall, gazing at it like he can bore a wall into concrete with sheer strength of will. Like he can achieve something impossible the second, third, fourth time round.

When he speaks, his voice isn’t the same anymore. His eyes are much too bright to be natural and his chin trembles just the slightest bit. He waves his hand around him in an effort to mask his growing hysteria. When he speaks again, he isn’t the same anymore.

“How could he be so _stupid_?” he repeats again, a little more broken. “How could _I_ be so stupid?”

*

“What are we actually doing here?” Wilson finally snaps. “You know I have cancer. Isn’t this the part where you… you know, take my life or something?”

Death almost brings up a hand to stroke his hair. “I wish I could, James,” he says, desire lilting his tone and brightening his eyes. “I would love to take your heart and cradle it in my arms and never let it go. But that isn’t why you are here.”

“Are you telling me that it isn’t my time yet?” Wilson bites.

Death laughs. It’s soft with sharp edges and can be easily mistook for a cough this time round. “That is not for me to decide. Only _you_ can say that.”

Wilson frowns. “I don’t get it.”

“I could tell you many things,” Death uses words sparingly. “I could tell you that you were made for greatness, that you were _born_ to do extraordinary things, that the well-being of the world is conditional on your existence. But those would be lies. Only you can tell me if you want to live.”

Wilson takes a deep breath and tries to think. “I have my patients. There are some patients who are on experimental treatments that I want to see through. And I guess there are my parents, too.”

Death shakes his head vigorously. “No, _no_. We talked about this, remember? You wouldn’t cease to exist for any of them as long as they are alive and they continue the trend to remember you. That isn’t what I’m talking about.”

Wilson slams his palm on the table. “What do you _want_ , then? I don’t get it.”

Death intertwines his fingers together on the table and leans close enough for Wilson to feel his presence. “Don’t tell me why you want to exist. Tell me why you want to _live_.”

*

Wilson looks at the scans spread out in front of him. The words on the report are promising enough: the tumor isn’t as aggressive as previously thought. The tumor is still localized to the thymus and hasn’t significantly invaded the surrounding fatty tissue.

He is a doctor, there is nothing he understands better than clinical terms and their underlying significance. The problem isn’t that he has a malignant tumor growing inside his chest which is killing his viable cells step by fucking step.

The problem is that there is still _hope_. Even after everything.

Of all the things he will never allow himself to think of, this is the most terrible: that it was all for nothing.

*

Wilson stays silent.

“Tell me why you want to _live_ ,” Death urges.

“I don’t know,” he says wearily.

“ _Tell me_ ,” Death raises his voice and his eyes narrow into slits.

“I don’t know, alright?” Wilson snaps, even as he’s aware that this is a particularly bad idea. “I don’t _know_ why I want to live. Maybe it’s because I have tickets for the Broadway in the summer. Maybe it’s because I have tickets for this conference next month that promises to be enlightening. Maybe because I still haven’t read all of _Sherlock Holmes_ and because the waitress at the café next to my place always puts extra whipped cream in my coffee. Maybe it’s because my parents are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary--” he trails off as he catches Death quirking his lips.

“What?” he snaps.

“See?” Death is openly smiling now, a hint of pride in his voice.

“See what? These things have nothing to do with living.”

This time, Death does lean forward to touch his hair. “You want to live for yourself. All these little things that you’re still looking forward to, they are all parts of you. You want to live for your own life. _See_?”

Wilson thinks he’s beginning to.

*

On the sixty-seventh day, Foreman strides into his office.

“You still haven’t taken any time off,” he states.

Wilson looks up from his paperwork and simply arches an eyebrow. Foreman lifts a hand in mock-surrender and looks strangely uncomfortable.

I’m not here for that,” he says and clears his throat. “I have to, ah, fill the office next door.”

Wilson clicks his pen shut and tries to lessen the ever-present ache in his chest. He shrugs.

Foreman frowns. “And you’re okay with this?”

Wilson shrugs, tries to give a watery smile. “Well, I figure nothing would annoy him more than someone obnoxious in his office so…”

Foreman looks at him closely for a moment, and when he doesn’t waver, turns around to walk out.

“Foreman?” Wilson calls him back.

“I, ah,” he coughs lightly as Foreman turns to look. “I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon at Princeton General. They are insisting on being thorough with the physicals before the surgery next week.”

Foreman presses a hand to his mouth briefly. “Yeah?”

Wilson nods. “Yeah. Guess I’ll need that time off, after all.”

*

Death and a doctor walk into a bar. This is, however, not the beginning of a joke.

Death stands up and the doctor remains seated.

“So what happens next?” the doctor asks. “Do I wake up now?”

Death looks amused. “I don’t know. Are you asleep?”

The doctor shakes his head and looks down at the table. Lets out a harsh breath. Unclenches his fingers.

“Hey, Wilson?”

He looks up, frowns at the use of his last name. But when he looks up, Death isn’t smiling anymore. In that moment, Death has sharp, piercing, blue eyes and a hint of a scruff and is holding a cane. Wilson blinks rapidly and rubs at his cheekbones to stop from breaking down because this isn’t true, this cannot be _real_ and happening in front of him and crushing his chest and breaking his heart.

“Yeah?” he asks in a strangled whisper, and tries not to crack.

“Forgive yourself,” Death whispers.

When he blinks again, he is alone.

*

He visits the cemetery for the first time at the three-month mark.

He spends a long time digging his feet into the earth surrounding the grave, and stares at the carving on the epitapth. It’s windy outside, the wind blows through his jacket and chills his bones and blows his hair into his ears. He bites his lip.

“House, I--” he starts before halting abruptly. It occurs to him very suddenly that he doesn’t have a speech prepared for this, doesn’t have a clue what to say next. He wants to say: _you idiot, how dare you leave me alone_ and _I need someone to make fun of the nurses while I’m possibly spending hours in my chemo chair_ and _I have too much change in my wallet now because no one’s spending it all on vending machines_ and _I really, really want you to be alive just for a second so I can kill you with my bare hands because how you could be such a colossal idiot_ and _there’s a glass door with your name on it and god, sometimes I just walk in without paying attention and you’re not there and I want to throw up_. Most of all, even as he knows he can never speak the words out loud, he wants to say this: _I hope you died with the knowledge that you are needed, that you are integral to so many people, and most importantly, that you are wanted. I hope you died wanting to live, even though you could never believe in living when you were alive._

Wilson takes a deep breath and offers all he can. “I miss you,” he finally says.


End file.
